SURVIVE THE SAVAGE SEA.

UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn.NFINE/NFINE.No owner inscrptn but price-clip to dw/dj.Colour photographic dw/dj with minimal shelf-wear to edges.Blue paper-covered boards with gilt letters to spine/backstrip and colour map endpapers.Top edge with half of fore-edge both slightly aged; contents clean,apart from pp46/7 - residue marks of a pressed flower;with another page 114/5,having a pressed flower in situ.UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn, 223pp+1pp publisher advert at rear includes a prologue,a glossary,33 b/w illus by Pam Littlewood in text and 13 b/w photographs. At 10 am on 15 June 1972, the 19-ton,43-foot schooner Lucette,sailed by a Scottish ex-farmer and his family,was attacked by killer whales in the Pacific,and sank in 60 seconds.What happened after that is the subject of one of the most astounding survival stories ever to be told.In an inflatable rubber raft,with a 9-foot fibreglass dinghy to tow it, Dougal Robertson and his crew of five - his wife,18-year-old son and 12-year-old twin boys,and a student friend - decided to make for the coast of Costa Rica,1,000 miles and an estimated 50 days away.They had emergency rations of food and water for only three days,a handful of random items salvaged from Lucette,and no maps,compass or instruments of any kind.Steering by sun and stars,they set course for the Doldrums.A ship passed near them but failed to see their flares,leaving them to face death from thirst,starvation and exhaustion;but they did not die.Their raft sank under them and still they did not die.Cramped together in their tiny dinghy with only six inches of freeboard,they clawed a place for themselves in the savage ecology of the ocean,on constant alert against 20-foot waves,marauding sharks and numerous other hazards,through rain,storm,calm and equatorial heat.With knowledge as their principal weapon,love as their bond,courage and self-sacrifice became a way of life,as mile after mile these six humans in the vast reaches of the Pacific refused to admit defeat. After 37 days their ordeal was ended,a Japanese fishing boat picking them up when they had only 290 miles to go.Dougal Robertson tells this incredible story with moving eloquence,sharing with the reader each day's crisis or triumph,each person's hopes and fears,the tensions,the heartbreaks,and the Robertsons' indomitable determination not to die.He fully describes the techniques that enabled them to survive.At the end of the book,he sets forth the lessons to be learned from this devastating experience - lessons which no reader who is likely to sail on or fly over the sea can afford to ignore,for like the Robertsons that reader too could,in one catastrophic minute,be in the same position of having to 'Survive the Savage Sea'. Please contact rpaxtonden@blueyonder.co.uk ,for correct shipping/P+p quotes - particularly ALL overseas buyers - BEFORE ordering through the order page!